Vegetal | Parramon Foreign Rights | Grupo Norma

The design process of any project invariably draws references from our natural environment and finds inspiration in the behaviour of plants, the structures of animals or the morphology of minerals. A detailed tour of analogies between architecture and the vegetal world is the first stop in this collection that serves as a useful design tool for the contemporary architect. These analogies, which at times are consciously devised by the designer and other times made apparent when analyzed parallel to the vegetal world, have been present throughout the history of architecture, such as Art Nouveau and its floral motifs, or the vegetal patterns of Islamic architecture. The contemporary architect, like any other designer, continues to explore fixed elements from other disciplines to learn from their structure, form or function. In architecture today, thanks to the current systems of representation and construction, the results can reach a high degree of abstraction and sophisticated execution. This collection focuses on this relationship between architecture and other disciplines, in order to further explore how architects employ mechanisms of abstraction, representation and construction.